


we can lose (and call it living)

by professortennant



Category: Longmire (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M, Soulmate-Identifying Marks
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-03
Updated: 2018-12-03
Packaged: 2019-09-06 12:33:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,846
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16832695
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/professortennant/pseuds/professortennant
Summary: On the worst day of his life, Walt watches as Martha's name disappears from his skin with her dying breath. He barely has a moment to breathe when his right wrist begins to burn once more, just like it did all those years ago, and a new name etches itself into his skin.Victoria Moretti.





	we can lose (and call it living)

No one knows how or why it started. Perhaps it was something biological—the next evolutionary step. No matter the reason, on the morning of your eighteenth birthday, there on the inside of your wrist, the name of your soulmate would appear. And in the same mythos of a child waiting for Santa Claus to deliver presents on Christmas, everyone waited on their eighteenth for the appearance of their soulmate’s name.

Walt knows long before his eighteenth birthday who his soulmate is, though. Martha has been the only person to make him smile, to make his heart stutter and flip when she says his name. 

When they are teenagers and no longer children, Walt notices Martha’s shiny red hair and wonders what it would feel like slipping between his fingers. He notices the curve of her mouth and thinks he needs to know what she tastes like. The sight of her swamped by the material of his letterman’s jacket in the passenger side of his rusty pick-up truck sends a rush of warmth along his skin.

Despite  _ knowing _ , on the morning of his eighteenth birthday, Walter Longmire wakes up and takes a moment to feel the Wyoming sunshine streaming across his face before taking a deep breath to calm the rush of anxiety-induced butterflies and opens his eyes.

Time to face the music. 

He raises his wrist to his face and takes in the thick, dark, looping script etched into the inside skin of his left wrist.

_ Martha Rodgers. _

The grin on his face hurts his cheeks and he’s up and out of bed, tugging on jeans, boots, and his letterman and stumbling out the door. His parents sit at the kitchen table with breakfast and a small pile of presents stacked in the middle of the table. Walt barely has time to wish them a good morning before he’s rushing out to his truck, ignoring their incredulous holler of, “Where are you going?”

He doesn’t have time to stop. The ride to Martha’s house is simultaneously the longest and shortest of his life, and he doesn’t stop for red lights—not when his heart is pounding and his wrist burns where her name is etched into his skin. 

She’s waiting for him on the front porch when he pulls up, all sunshine and knowing smiles. He trips out of the truck in an effort to get to her faster. There’s no time to be cool and calm and collected; not when his  _ soulmate _ is waiting. 

“Hey there, cowboy,” she teases, hands tucked behind her back and a smile on her face. 

His cheeks are stretched wide with the smile on his face, his heart thumping beneath his chest. The soles of his boots kick up the dirt as he half-walks, half-runs towards her, staining his jeans with red dust. 

“Miss Rodgers,” he greets, tipping an imaginary hat on his head towards her. She rolls her eyes at him and bites her lip. He leans against the wooden column and just keeps on grinning at her. 

“It’s my birthday today,” he says, hooking his thumbs into his belt loops. “My  _ eighteenth _ birthday.”

Martha cocks her head to the side and sidles forward, coy and teasing. “Oh yeah? That mean you got something important to tell me?”

It’s the glint in her eye, the way she sucks her bottom lip between her teeth, the way he’s suddenly hyper-aware of her every movement. It’s then that he  _ knows. _

He reaches for her left wrist and pulls it between their bodies, turning her hand palm up and pushing the sleeve of her long-sleeve thermal up to reveal the name on her wrist. She’d turned eighteen only a few weeks prior and had kept the name of her soulmate a secret from him.

She doesn’t resist the movements and when he sees his own name on her skin, hot white relief floods through his veins followed by a tsunami-wave of  _ happiness _ .

Walt looks up at her, his grin softening into a love-struck, dopey smile. “Seems like you and I might be soulmates, Martha Rodgers.”

Her fingers wrap around his wrist and pull it forward, mirroring his hold on her. Their thumbs sweep over their names and for a moment, it feels like electricity is coursing through them both. They are a circuit now, closed and alive with power. 

“I knew it was you, Walter Longmire.”

He kisses her then. Steps forward and finally slides his hand into her hair, learns the texture of her hair between his fingers and the taste of her tongue between his lips. 

For the first time in his life, Walt knows true, complete happiness.

___________

They’re happy more often than they are not. He kisses her every morning and night and whispers into her skin that he would have chosen her even without the marks on their wrists. When she tells him she’s pregnant, he can barely see through the tears of happiness, and he swings her into his arms and buries his face into her neck. 

He loves her completely and fully.

___________

Years later, Cady graduates from law school and sets her sights on taking the world by storm. Walt has been sheriff for a few election cycles and has started to get the hang of being in the public eye. Martha strengthens her spine into steel and stands up to Barlow Connally and actively campaigns against the casino in her county. They have settled into a life all their own, one built on love and devotion.

After what feels like a lifetime of happiness, Walt looks down one day to see Martha’s name on his wrist fading from its normal, bold dark color to a soft, translucent grey. 

His mouth goes dry, and his heart plummets. Soulmates are, on the best of days, a mystery to him. But he’s been on earth long enough and been in this job long enough, that he knows there is only one reason for a fading soulmate mark.

Ice creeps through his veins, and he barely manages to gasp out to Ruby that he’ll be out the rest of the day before he stumbles into his truck and heads for their cabin.

It feels eerily like the drive he took once upon a time.

This time, instead of waiting for him with the wind and sun in her hair, Martha sits with her head bowed and her hands wrapped around a steaming mug of tea. When she lifts her head at the sound of his truck rolling across the gravel, he can see her eyes glassy with tears and her bottom lip trembling. 

The sound of his boots on the steps echo up to the nearby mountains and thud in the hollow emptiness developing in his chest.

“Martha?”

She pats the spot on the bench next to her and he sits, his thigh pressed against hers, like they’ve done a hundred thousand times on this very spot. The very place where he’s loved her—spent mornings kissing her neck and hands and watching the sunrise with her, this will now be the place where their hearts shatter.

With her next words, everything changes. 

“I have cancer.”

_______________

Two thousand miles away in Philadelphia, Victoria Moretti has come to terms with the fact that she is one of the unlucky few who simply do not have a soulmate mark. She’d woken up on her eighteenth birthday with hope in her heart. In a house filled with brothers, a mercurial mother, and a demanding father, there had been a part of her—however small—that ached for something, someone, of her own. 

But on that morning, her wrists were unmarked and the single, flickering flame of hope had been summarily doused. She’d dressed with a stoic focus, and in the kitchen, her brothers had teased her, tugged at her arms and demanded she show them the name of the guy they had to go beat up. (“Or warn the poor the bastard! You think he knows he’s been tied to Vic the Terror?”)

She had tossed a plate at their heads and told them to fuck off. 

There wasn’t time for self-pity in the Moretti household. On the walk to school that day though, she had hidden at the back of the alley behind the school, tucked away from prying eyes, and allowed herself a few tears of bitter disappointment. 

_______

Life without a soulmate, she tells herself for the next decade-and-a-half, is freeing. No strings, no rules, no obligations. She fucks her way through college and the academy, tangles herself with her unmarked classmates and fellow cops. It’s a fun—if sometimes unsatisfying—life. 

(And, if on her birthday, or on the nights when the silence in her apartment can’t be numbed with sex and alcohol, she checks her wrist for any sign of change, well, that’s between her and the thin walls of her shitty apartment.)

Vic tells herself a soulmate would hold her back, anyway. She throws herself head-first into dangerous situations, breaks down doors and uses her own colorful vocabulary to entice Philly’s local scumbag population to jump the fuck off a cliff. 

She develops a reputation as the best marksman on the force with a keen eye for ballistics. Her old captain had once bragged that he had a rookie on his squad who could identify a bullet’s caliber practically by eye. The brass tells her she’s got a bright future ahead of her and that the Bureau are looking to recruit a talent like Victoria Moretti. 

It’s not a soulmate, but it’s something that’s hers.

_______

On the morning of her 32nd birthday, Vic wakes with a groan, and lays in bed for a moment. The sounds of her city filters in through the thin walls of her apartment and while there’s no one there to whisper  _ Happy Birthday _ in her ear or greet her with presents, her coffee maker automatically kicks on in greeting and begins brewing a cup of strong, dark coffee.

“Happy fuckin’ birthday,” she mutters to herself, throwing a hand over her eyes and stretching the kinks out of her back and legs and arms. Thirty-two is starting to feel a lot like what she always thought fifty-two would feel like. 

She scratches absentmindedly at the inside of her right wrist. The skin prickles again in irritation, demanding her attention. Bracing herself to see a bedbug or, worse, a fucking cockroach on her body, Vic peers at the tingling skin and feels her whole world change. 

There, in dark, bold strokes, is a soulmate mark; a name. 

_ Walter Longmire. _

She can’t believe she’s waited this long for some guy named fucking  _ Walter.  _

_______

Across the country, on the worst day of his life, Walt watches as Martha's name disappears from his skin with her dying breath. He barely has a moment to breathe, to grieve, to kiss her cooling knuckles, when his right wrist begins to burn once more, just like it did all those years ago, and a new name etches itself into his skin. 

_ Victoria Moretti. _

**Author's Note:**

> thank you nellie for being a bad ass beta for my beta virgin self.


End file.
